WholeLife Matrix: Financial Viability / Marketing & Sales
“There is a point in every contest when sitting on the sidelines is not an option.”
— Dean Smith

By running a contest, you can boost your followers, customer loyalty, and sales. Contests are a fun way to engage your audience and also to grow your email list. You can get your current subscribers involved also and have them “like” your Facebook Page. The information you gather from the contest can also be useful for future campaigns.

1. Choose a Relevant Goal
The first thing you need to do is decide on a goal for your contest that is relevant to your business, such as increasing your newsletter subscribers, collecting content from your audience, or selling a product or service. Your goal should be specific and measurable.

2. Choose the Duration for Your Contest
In your contest rules, include the date and start and end times of your contest, along with the time zone. Be sure to share this information in your promotions. If you intend to give away a large prize, you will probably want to allow a longer time period for registrations to get as many entries as possible. For smaller prizes, you might do a weekly contest.

3. Pick the Contest Type
Facebook has various contest types to choose from including photo-vote, video-vote, and caption and sweepstakes. Sweepstakes are the easiest to enter. Pick the contest type that is best for your goals. Photo-vote or video-vote contests work great for collecting content from users. Choose a prize that is relevant to your business and is enticing.

4. Determine and List the Contest Rules
Your contest rules should detail all the important information about your contest such as the number of entries required to give the prize away, when and how you will pick and announce the winner, how you will inform the winner, and cases in which the winner will forfeit the prize. You should also determine who can enter your contest. Does the entrant need to be in a certain age group, be a certain gender or live in a certain location?

5. Pick the Best Tools for Your Goal
You can find tools that are mobile friendly and will help you to gather data such as email addresses, have voter verification abilities, and require people to like your Facebook page to enter a contest. The tool you choose should also make it easy for entrants to share the contest.

6. Optimize and Promote
Your promotion page should represent your brand and the contest. Use your logo and colors and make the form simple, asking for only two or three pieces of information from entrants, such as name, email, and age. Also, pick one or two hashtags to use for promotion. To promote your page, try contest promotion websites, promote to your email list, on your blog, or on social media. Facebook ads are another option. They allow for very precise targeting of your audience.

Once your contest has finished running, analyze the results. How well did people respond to your offer? What worked well and what didn’t? Make improvements for the future.

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